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I have watched four epic movies in the past two days: James Cameron's Avatar (in IMAX 3D!), The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Star Trek (the 2009 remake). I'm a bit overwhelmed.
Avatar was incredible. The 3D was cool but distracting sometimes, or rather, not completely necessary for the same experience. But being on an enormous IMAX screen really made it feel like I was in another world. It was such a beautifully made film. Man. The CGI effects just... I dunno, when you look at people who toy around with digital animation when they're undergrads, you have to wonder how on earth they could end up creating entire worlds for blockbuster movies. Also, the fact that Cameron asked a linguistics professor at USC to create a language from scratch for the na'vi people on Pandora- that's AWESOME. That's something I'd like to do: create a language for use in fiction. But before that I guess it'd be more valuable to tackle existing languages that don't have writing and translate the Bible. Yeah, that's kind of what I have hopes of doing with my Linguistics/Languages major at Swarthmore. And so, Avatar was excellent. Take me to Pandora, please.
The two LOTR movies were great. I wanted to have a marathon of all three today, but Alan had to leave early so we only watched the first two. I don't know, I've just had this weird craving for Lord of the Rings, ever since finals were over last week. The first one came out in 2001. That's eight years ago... when I was only 11. Filming techniques and computer graphics were already really cool. And I'm starting to really like battle scenes... I remember being scared of the battles in LOTR, scared when Boromir got stuck with three Uruk'hai arrows, scared when Galadriel turned all demon-y, scared when Frodo saw dead people in the water, scared when they first saw corpses in the Mines of Moria. But now I watch it all in awe of a good story and amazed at how good movie-makers can portray it. And on the note of creating languages... Tolkein must have been an amazing linguist. Elvish, Dwarfish, Entish, and who knows what else? He created a world from scratch, and several ancient civilizations within it to boot. Dang, how I wish I could write.
And lastly, Star Trek. It was... visually very cool, and it was my first real exposure to Star Trek. Both of my brothers were Trekkies when we were younger; we even had a Star Trek computer game that I couldn't figure out how to play. I was also frustrated as a kid because I could never do the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" thing. But I never watched the show or the movies. Now I'm much more familiar with the whole franchise, and I think it's pretty legit. Only the movie seemed super fast-paced and somewhat confusing what with all the time traveling and parallel realities and fantasy monologues about destiny. Of the many moral shticks slapped into the dialogue, I actually really liked the one about cold, clear logical thinking versus "emotional compromise"; while I think it's brilliant to have a race of humanoids who highly value logic, intelligence, and emotional restraint, the emergence of... character in Spock's character was fun to watch. There was a lot of fun stuff in Star Trek. Don't think I'll become a Trekkie anytime soon, though.
Okay, my eyes are pulsing now. My prescription's definitely going up...
Happy birthday Jesus, and Merry Christmas to you all!
[edit] I completed the LOTR trilogy.
Avatar was incredible. The 3D was cool but distracting sometimes, or rather, not completely necessary for the same experience. But being on an enormous IMAX screen really made it feel like I was in another world. It was such a beautifully made film. Man. The CGI effects just... I dunno, when you look at people who toy around with digital animation when they're undergrads, you have to wonder how on earth they could end up creating entire worlds for blockbuster movies. Also, the fact that Cameron asked a linguistics professor at USC to create a language from scratch for the na'vi people on Pandora- that's AWESOME. That's something I'd like to do: create a language for use in fiction. But before that I guess it'd be more valuable to tackle existing languages that don't have writing and translate the Bible. Yeah, that's kind of what I have hopes of doing with my Linguistics/Languages major at Swarthmore. And so, Avatar was excellent. Take me to Pandora, please.
The two LOTR movies were great. I wanted to have a marathon of all three today, but Alan had to leave early so we only watched the first two. I don't know, I've just had this weird craving for Lord of the Rings, ever since finals were over last week. The first one came out in 2001. That's eight years ago... when I was only 11. Filming techniques and computer graphics were already really cool. And I'm starting to really like battle scenes... I remember being scared of the battles in LOTR, scared when Boromir got stuck with three Uruk'hai arrows, scared when Galadriel turned all demon-y, scared when Frodo saw dead people in the water, scared when they first saw corpses in the Mines of Moria. But now I watch it all in awe of a good story and amazed at how good movie-makers can portray it. And on the note of creating languages... Tolkein must have been an amazing linguist. Elvish, Dwarfish, Entish, and who knows what else? He created a world from scratch, and several ancient civilizations within it to boot. Dang, how I wish I could write.
And lastly, Star Trek. It was... visually very cool, and it was my first real exposure to Star Trek. Both of my brothers were Trekkies when we were younger; we even had a Star Trek computer game that I couldn't figure out how to play. I was also frustrated as a kid because I could never do the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" thing. But I never watched the show or the movies. Now I'm much more familiar with the whole franchise, and I think it's pretty legit. Only the movie seemed super fast-paced and somewhat confusing what with all the time traveling and parallel realities and fantasy monologues about destiny. Of the many moral shticks slapped into the dialogue, I actually really liked the one about cold, clear logical thinking versus "emotional compromise"; while I think it's brilliant to have a race of humanoids who highly value logic, intelligence, and emotional restraint, the emergence of... character in Spock's character was fun to watch. There was a lot of fun stuff in Star Trek. Don't think I'll become a Trekkie anytime soon, though.
Okay, my eyes are pulsing now. My prescription's definitely going up...
Happy birthday Jesus, and Merry Christmas to you all!
[edit] I completed the LOTR trilogy.
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